A company sells items to their trading partners and lists the description of these items in a catalog. To aid in clearly specifying the item, the company assigns to each item an item identifier, called a part number or part name, which is used for order and other processes that require identification of the item. The item identifier is usually a short compact string of digits, letters, and special characters that may be processed by computer programs. People working with these item identifiers learn to recognize the items by their item identifiers. Since the item identifier need only be consistent within a company, the structure, format, meaning, etc. are unique for each company. Hence, each company has its own item identification system. When buyer orders an item from a seller, the buyer usually orders the item using the identification system of the seller but in some industries such as electronics, the buyer may order an item using the item identifier of the buyer. When the seller's identifier is used, the seller provides a catalog so that buyers can find the item using the description provided by the seller and use the item identifier to order the item. The catalog and item identifier mechanism has worked for a very long time and is a corner stone for commerce.
The item identifier has a one-to-one mapping to the “orderable” item. As an example, a sugar provider sells sugar. However, the sugar is not sold as “sugar” but as bags of sugar from a finite set of sizes for example: 10 pound bag, 50 pound bag, 100 pound bag, etc. Each bag size is assigned an item identifier so that a buyer can purchase a specific number of a specific bag size. For example, the 10 pound bag is assigned the identifier “S10”, 50 pound bag the identifier “S50”, and 100 pound bag the identifier “S100”. When the sugar supplier received an order for “6-S50”, then six 50 pound bags were ordered.
The catalog structures and item identifier mechanisms worked well for processes that had people executing the process steps. People can accommodate high levels of variability and still function. However, computer systems are now used to execute these processes. These systems and the programs that support the processes are fast, accurate, and dumb. Small variations may require that the programs be modified or rewritten. There are significant advantages for industries to standardize the item identifier and the catalog. The item identifier for most grocery items is the Universal Product Code, UPC, which is seen as the bar code on the item. The UPC is twelve-digit string where six digits identify the selling company and five digits are assigned by the company to identify their products. One digit is a check digit. The company has freedom to assign their five digits as item identifiers for its products. Most companies have less than 100,000 orderable products so the five-digit limit is workable. The grocery and other industries have had significant success in implementing the UPC and gained substantial financial benefit through the changes in the business processes supported by the UPC. However, the electronics industry lead by a strong industry consortium, RosettaNet, and a strong standards organization, the Uniform Code Council, UCC, has had difficulty in the adoption of the global successor to the twelve digit UPC, the fourteen digit Global Trade Item Number, GTIN. The GTIN, like the UPC, identifies the company that sells the item and provides up to five digits for the company to assign for item identifiers. Five digits provide 100,000 unique combinations 00000 to 99999. RosettaNet defines “Partner Interface Processes”, PIP's, the business transactions between trading partners to accomplish elements of larger processes. An example is PIP 2A9: Query Technical Product Information which defines how one trading partner can query the catalog of another over the Internet and receive a response with either the item identifier of an item matching the description of the item in the query or an indication that there is no matching item. The PIP defines the Extensible Markup Language, XML, message formats and the state behavior of each partner depending on the decisions indicated in the XML messages. Another example is PIP 3A4: Manage Purchase Order which defines how one trading partner can send a purchase order to a trading partner and the management of the purchase order between the order placement and delivery. RosettaNet and the UCC want to standardize the definition of the item identifier in the XML messages and have chosen the GTIN as the standard. While it may appear that many of the items are simple and can be assigned a GTIN, closer inspection reveals a level of complexity that will be difficult to accommodate with the use of the GTIN as currently defined.
Many of the electronic items have a wide range of configurable options in the specification of the orderable item. As an example, a capacitor, a simple electronic part, is described by a set of properties such as the capacitance value, tolerance, resistance, body size, carrier package, etc. Selecting values for each of these properties specifies a capacitor. The values are typically encoded in the part number, the item identifier. In the example of the sugar supplier, the bag size was encoded in the part number. The capacitor suppliers encode the values for each of these variables into the item identifier using algorithms that assign portions of the item identifier to each of the variables. For example, as illustrated in FIG. 1, the item identifier for a Kemet Electronics Corp. capacitor is C0805C103K5RAC where the first character encodes the capacitor type (Ceramic), the next four characters encode the capacitor body type (0805), the next encodes the specification (Standard), the next three encode the capacitance value (0.50 pF.), the next character encodes the tolerance, the next the resistance value, etc. Numbers and letters are used. Thus, in a small number of characters, 6 to 20, the possible configurations for a Kemet ceramic capacitor are covered. However, the number of possible combinations are very large. Six alphanumeric characters can encode over two billion combinations. Most combinations will never be used. In addition to the capacitor characteristics encoded in the Kemet item identifier, information about the carrier of the capacitors is required and added as a suffix to the encoded identifier. The buyer cannot buy one capacitor but buys them in carriers designed to feed the capacitors into the assembly equipment. There are a number of different carriers to fit different assembly equipment and the carrier must match the equipment requirements. For example, Mylar tape on a 12″ reel carrier holds 10,000 capacitors and a bulk carrier holds 15,000 capacitors. A buyer that has assembly equipment that needs the Mylar tape carrier must not order the bulk carrier. The number of combinations of capacitor characteristics and carriers is very large. Assigning a GTIN for each of the possible combinations is not possible: 1) The number of possible combinations is larger than the 100,000 values of a GTIN and 2) The mapping of combinations to GTIN values would require a table with as many rows as combinations. The algorithms that map the variable values to a finite number of characters are very effective. However, this structure is not consistent with the RosettaNet and UCC definition of the use of the GTIN as currently defined except for those cases where the algorithm can map the variable values into the five digits that a company can control. The algorithms for each company, even those who manufacture identical items, for example capacitors, are unique to each company. The systems of each company are built around the part number so this will not be easy to change.
However, RosettaNet has achieved a significant milestone in the definition and agreement of the catalog structure, the taxonomy of how the characteristics and values are expressed in the description for each item. Thus, searching for and defining each item can be done in a consistent process and the resulting definition for identical items from different manufacturers can be the same. The RosettaNet vision is illustrated in FIG. 2 where a buyer can connect through the Internet 125 to a seller's Web site with a catalog using a web browser 127 or a business-to-business server 126 and send an item description 1 to the seller's electronic catalog 2 using the RosettaNet PIP 2A9: Query Technical Product Information. The catalog 2 responds with the item identifier 3 if the seller has an item matching the description. The buyer can then order the item using the item identifier provided by the seller's electronic catalog by sending an order 4 using the RosettaNet PIP 3A4: Manage Purchase Order to the seller's order processing system 5. However, the products or services provided by the seller may not be covered by the RosettaNet standard and the RosettaNet 2A9 will not be sufficient to accommodate the characteristics that are not standard.
The function of the item identifier is for the supplier or seller to provide the item defined in the item description. The buyer uses the seller's catalog to determine the item identifier. Essentially the seller is telling buyers, “If you want to order the item you described, ask for it using the item identifier that is provided as the response”. The item description and form of the response must be standardized for this process to work. However, the item identifier need not have a standard since the item identifier need only be used with a specific catalog. RosettaNet has achieved a level of standardization but cannot cover all of the possible functions, features, and services provided by trading partners in the electronic industry. The item identifier must fully identify the item if the process is to operate with systems and remove the need for human interpretation or intervention.
In the past, the item identifier was processed by people and needed to be short enough so that a person could write it in an order form with minimum transcription errors. However, the orders are now created by computer systems and processed by computer systems. The item identifiers can now be much longer so that formats and processes can be standardized.
In the electronics industry, some buyers do not select an item from the seller's catalog but sends the description of the item and ask the seller to deliver the item using the buyer's item identifier to identify the item. In many cases, the seller has the item in the catalog but must still use the buyer's item identifier. Or, the seller has a similar item and modifies the item to meet the buyer's requirements. For example, the buyer wants the buyer's logo to be printed on the item where the item is already in the sellers catalog. The item identifier process must accommodate this form of item identification.
The RosettaNet standard processes, catalog taxonomies, and the use of GTIN as the only item identifier are not sufficient to support the requirements of the electronics industry and other industries where the items have a high number of configurations. The objective of RosettaNet is to provide the structure so that trading partners can rely on standard processes and data formats such that third parties can provide much of the systems and software and custom development can be avoided or at least minimized. This also permits connection to new trading partners with a minimum of effort and delay. Solving the configured item identifier problem will provide a complete framework for RosettaNet and thus, provide the benefits of a standard. The standard must provide a means for accommodating item properties that are not standard. In addition, it is desirable that the solution permits use of current systems wherever possible.